Fourth attempt on Trump’s life raises fresh questions about ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’

Four people have attempted to kill President Trump in less than two years, an unprecedented record that some attribute to the left’s virulent demonization of the president, otherwise known as Trump derangement syndrome.

Shortly after the Secret Service arrested the gunman who tried to storm the Washington Hilton ballroom where Mr. Trump and top members of his administration were seated Saturday, the president was ready to return to his table and resume the White House Correspondents’ Dinner as if the melee never happened.

After all, attempts on Mr. Trump’s life have almost become commonplace. Critics say the move is likely driven by relentless rhetoric from his left-wing opponents, who accuse the president of being, among other things, a pedophile, a fascist, a tyrant, an authoritarian, a traitor and a threat to democracy.

Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters on Sunday called the attack “the inevitable result of a radicalized left that has normalized political violence.”

Rep. Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, called for the creation of a bipartisan commission to examine political violence.

“We should look at mental health issues. We should look at language. But we need to do something to lower the temperature,” he said.

Yet the president almost ignored the latest assassination attempt.

“I won’t let that deter me,” Mr. Trump told reporters upon returning to the White House after the dinner was canceled.

The left’s verbal attacks on Mr. Trump have become more virulent since he took office for the second time. Just days ago, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, called for “maximum war, everywhere, all the time” against Trump’s agenda.

Mr. Jeffries and other prominent Democrats accused Mr. Trump of “running a pedophile protection program” after the Justice Department initially withheld some of the government records associated with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Many Democrats declared Mr. Trump a traitor after the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol, which they blamed him for inciting.

Some of the accusations appeared in a manifesto first obtained by the New York Post and said to have been written by Cole Tomas Allen, 31, who police say ran through a Secret Service checkpoint and rushed toward the ballroom Saturday night, armed with two guns and several knives.

“I no longer want to allow a pedophile, a rapist and a traitor to cover my hands with his crimes,” Mr. Allen wrote in an anti-Trump speech sent to his family before his attempt to storm the gala. “I feel rage thinking about everything this administration has done.”

Mr. Allen wrote that he planned to target administration officials, “prioritized from the highest to the lowest.”

Just two months ago, Austin Tucker Martin, 21, breached the security perimeter of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s Palm Beach residence, armed with a can of gasoline and a shotgun. Secret Service agents and a Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputy killed him. Mr. Trump was not present at the residence at the time.

Martin’s motivations could be linked to the Epstein files. He messaged a colleague a week before traveling from his home in North Carolina to Mar-a-Lago, asking an acquaintance to “awareness” of the Epstein files.

“I don’t know if you’ve read the Epstein files, but the harm is real and unmistakable,” Martin wrote in a text message obtained by TMZ.

In September 2024, Mr. Trump faced another assassination attempt at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.

Ryan Routh was arrested on September 15, 2024, after a Secret Service agent spotted him pointing a rifle through the fence bordering the golf course where Mr. Trump was playing that afternoon.

Court documents show that Routh harbored a strong dislike for Mr. Trump and supported Democratic presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris. Routh was developing alternative plans to bring down Mr. Trump, then the Republican presidential candidate.

In documents filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, prosecutors said Routh told an associate: “Send me [a rocket-propelled grenade] or stinger and I’ll see what we can do. … [Trump] this is not good for Ukraine.

Mr. Routh wrote a manifesto offering $150,000 “to anyone who can complete the job” if he was unable to carry out the assassination.

Just two months earlier, in July 2024, Mr. Trump’s ear was grazed by a would-be assassin’s bullet on an outdoor campaign stage in Butler, Pennsylvania. The president probably escaped death by just a few millimeters. That shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was killed by a Secret Service sniper and his motives remain officially undetermined. He may have been suffering from mental health issues and social isolation.

After the fourth assassination attempt, the president appeared unfazed as he spoke to White House reporters in the briefing room, still in a tuxedo, after the dinner was canceled.

“In light of tonight’s events, I ask all Americans to recommit wholeheartedly to resolving our differences peacefully. We must do this. We must resolve our differences,” he said. “I will say there were Republicans, Democrats, independents, conservatives, liberals and progressives. Maybe those words are interchangeable, but maybe they’re not. But yet, everyone in that room, a big crowd, a record crowd. There was a record group of people, and there was a tremendous amount of love and bonding. I looked, I looked, and I was very, very impressed by that.”

Mr. Trump called for the dinner to be rescheduled quickly and said he would not change his schedule, even though he believes it has made him a target.

Mr. Allen’s manifesto denounced the president’s destruction of so-called Venezuelan drug boats, which he said amounted to “execution without trial,” the detention of illegal immigrants and the war in Iran.

“I’ve done a lot. We’ve done a lot,” Mr. Trump said. “We took this country and we were a laughingstock for years, and now we are the hottest country in the world. We changed this country, and a lot of people are not happy about that.”